Zomby: "Natalia’s Song"

Though Zomby’s had a penchant for deftly separating his listeners from their expectations throughout most of his short career, he never did so in a way that foisted emotional maturation upon his listeners—or even upon himself. While his style swung wildly from introductory dubstep singles, to his ‘90s-rave-referencing debut Where Were U In ‘92? (2008), and then again to the chiptune-laden One Foot Ahead Of The Other (2009), his work never held much more depth than a video game fight sequence, each beat crafted from and the audience’s involvement limited to denser and more elaborate button mashing upon each successive pass.

But on “Natalia’s Song” Zomby trades in sweat and strobe lights for gnawing grief and remorse. Gut reaction suggests a nod to fellow Brit Burial, the godfather of semi-anonymous, pathos-laced dubstep, but Zomby’s iteration strikes far more intimately than Will Bevan’s ever been able to permit. Whereas Burial focuses on emotions qua emotions, letting the self-doubt and isolationism of his music exist separately from its human host, Zomby’s trajectory is specific, from one specific place to another, the result of a very specific person or action. Thus, “Natalia’s Song” is all warm-blooded regret from something set in a fixed plotline, and because of this we find Zomby cloaking his conflict and its characters; the identity of Natalia is never made even remotely explicit, though she’s obviously someone near or dear to the once-sunny producer.

What’s left is a reaction shot without any context, a private moment witnessed by strangers that would be discomforting were it not so immediately enveloping. Central to the pull of “Natalia’s Song” is a keyboard riff stretched across it, a groaning expanse that tethers the song’s midrange and bass elements into one heart-sinking whole. It’s a ghastly presentiment—one that looks sadly to the end of that fixed plotline—made all the more immediate by the uncharacteristically reserved beat programming Zomby employs. Though it could have easily carried a club banger, as the austere, domineering figure on this track its sighing girth is burdensome, humid, suffocating. Add the pining vocal samples and the enabling atmospherics, and one hopes for his sake that Natalia will soon be a thing of the past.